A Republican-led congressional panel has formally requested that Hillary Clinton turn over her private computer server, which she told reporters she used for government business when she was Secretary of State from 2009-2013.
The request, sent in a letter to Clinton’s lawyer on Thursday, was made by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who heads the House Select Committee on Benghazi panel, Reuters reported. It asks that the server be handed over to the State Department’s Inspector General or to another neutral third party. The letter gives Clinton until April 3 to respond or Gowdy will discuss other ways to obtain the server with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner.
“The Committee must have objective assurances it, and by extension the House of Representatives as a whole, has received all relevant information requested and necessary for a thorough investigation into what happened before, during and after the attacks in Benghazi, Libya,” Gowdy wrote in the letter.
“More broadly, the equities in these emails extend beyond this Committee. The House of Representatives and the American people are entitled to a complete accounting of the Secretary’s official record during he time as Secretary of State.”
It is the latest twist in the press and government’s scrutiny over the former secretary of state’s use of a personal email address to conduct government business. There is concern that Clinton’s email was account was not as secure as the State Department’s network, leaving her correspondence vulnerable to hackers and foreign nations.
Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement that the American people will be able to see relevant emails when they are released by the State Department.
“We’ve turned over all of her work emails, and taken the extraordinary step of asking the State Department to release all of them. When they are released, which we hope to be soon, it will offer an unprecedented opportunity for the American people to see for themselves that they are all there and then some,” he said.